Fish in the Sky (2 page)

Could it be that back then I fell asleep out of sheer boredom? But of course I don’t say that out loud. That’s no way to talk about the Bible.

The majestic work of creation stands before me on my desk, frozen for eternity like a photograph: outstretched wings, swollen chest, menacing beak, claws clinging to the rock. The falcon,
Falco rusticolus,
is a wondrous sight to behold when he glides through the sky and dives at two hundred miles an hour to catch his prey and snatch it in his claws like a thunderbolt. The ptarmigan is his favorite victim. He himself has no enemies to fear and rules over the heavens like a king.

According to legend, the Virgin Mary once convened all the birds of the world and ordered them to walk through fire to prove their faith and devotion to her. In those days, falcons and ptarmigans were like brother and sister and loved and admired each other. But the ptarmigan was cowardly and didn’t dare to cross the fire. That is why its legs are still furry, and the legs of other birds are singed to the skin. The Virgin Mary was angry with the ptarmigan and decreed that she would be the most vulnerable and defenseless of all birds, and the bird that everyone would want to hunt, particularly her brother, the falcon. This is why the falcon prefers to hunt the ptarmigan and singles her out to kill and eat. But once he has ripped her breast open and seen her heart, he recognizes his sister again. That triggers off a torrent of sorrow in him and pitiful weeping that echoes between the rocks and cliffs for a very long time afterward. But he can’t control his nature; despite the grief it causes him, he has to hunt his beloved sister.

I wonder if Dad feels like that when he thinks of Mom. Does Mom still long for him? If I hadn’t been born, Mom might have married some farmer up north, and Dad someone else too in the end. I only exist because they happened to meet at that country ball and danced together to that Beatles song. Maybe I was never supposed to exist. Maybe that was a miracle too.

My book lies on the desk:
Life and Creation
by Josh Stephenson, a thick exercise book I use to record anything of importance in life. I’ve come to realize that by observing nature and the animal kingdom with a scientific eye, you can actually learn to understand the things that really matter in life and creation. I open the book and start to draw the falcon at the top of the page. First the outline with a dark pencil and then the shadows with a softer one, drawing in the detail of his fine feathers, the pride in his chest, the fierceness of his piercing gaze, the power in the sharp claws clutching the rock. Then, below, I write down absolutely everything I know about the falcon, starting off with the story of why he started to hunt the ptarmigan. It’s only a folktale, of course, but it somehow seems to contain a lot more truth than many of the other stories that are supposed to be authentic and real. And why doesn’t the ptarmigan protect herself? Isn’t it because deep down she wants to be caught by the falcon? Doesn’t she long for his embrace even though she knows it will be her last? They’re lovers that can only ever meet at the moment of her death; for a brief moment, they can look each other in the eye and see themselves in their true light. Then it’s all over.

And the falcon flies high up into the heavens and weeps.

Peter Johnson, my friend and classmate, is on the doorstep. He puffs up his chest and gives me a stiff salute, clicking his heels and striking a stern military pose, puffy cheeked, auburn haired, short fingered.

“Reporting for duty, Sergeant Stephenson!”

This is how we’ve been greeting each other ever since we saw some comedy about the army at Peter’s house, sometime when we were eleven.

And I do the same — give him a stiff salute, puff out my chest, and strike the same macho military pose that Peter finds so funny — and say, “At ease, Private Johnson.”

Then his face cracks into a smile and he laughs because he still thinks it’s a really funny routine. And that’s the only way we ever greet each other.

“Happy birthday!” he says, handing me a package.

Sometimes Peter and I are like brothers, because we share the same interests — natural history and zoology — but other times we’re about as alike as chalk and cheese. Unlike me, there’s nothing that can knock him off-balance; he’s always the same, never too sulky but never too happy either, more kind of even keeled. Maybe it’s good he’s that way, because he’s got five sisters — two older, three younger — and there’s hardly a moment’s peace in his house.

Mom ushers Peter into the living room, where my dad’s sister, Auntie Carol, is sitting. Mom always invites her to my birthdays. That’s because Carol is such a good person, as Mom likes to put it. And because she makes the best pear tart in the world, and for as long as I can remember, she’s always turned up to my birthday parties with a pear tart. But only then, never on other occasions. For the other 364 days of the year, I can only dream of such a treat. Auntie Carol’s pear tarts are so good that there’s just nothing else like them; they dissolve so fast in your mouth that you immediately have to gobble down another slice to keep the taste there, and then another and another until you’re totally bloated.

I unwrap Peter’s package and find a yellow bag with a blue string around the opening and a hard cube inside.

“What’s that?” Carol asks with a lump of sugar clenched between her teeth.

“It’s called a laughing bag,” I say, delighted. Peter and I have been admiring it in the shop for ages; the poor shop assistant got tired of giving us a demonstration of how it works.

“What’s that?” asks Mom. Peter grins over his plate of tart and glances back and forth at me and them.

“It’s this,” I say, squeezing the bag.

And then the bag starts laughing. It’s a metallic laugh that starts deep down and rises, bit by bit, to a ridiculously high-pitched climax of a splutter and giggle. Then all Peter and I can do is burst out laughing ourselves, but Carol and Mom just shake their heads with a slightly nauseated air, not even attempting a smile.

“That’s really silly,” Carol mutters.

Then the voice in the bag takes a dive and sinks deep, deep below to a
ho, ho, ho
and shows no sign of stopping. Peter and I are bright red in the face and sweating so much from trying to suffocate the laughter that we can barely breathe until Mom has suddenly had enough of this nonsense.

“Turn that thing off and sit down here if you want some pear tart,” she orders. “Where did you get that thing?” she asks Peter, as if trying to find out where she should send me to give it back.

“Some shop,” Peter sighs with a wheezing sound in his throat.

I sit at the table and start digging into the tart, but we have to avoid all eye contact to stop ourselves from having another outburst.

“You’re so silly,” says Carol, lighting a Camel, the sour smoke burning my eyes as it drifts across the table.

“Moronic,” Mom adds in agreement, lighting a Kent, with almost no smell at all. Mom smokes only when Carol comes over.

In the end, Peter and I waddle up to my bedroom with bloated stomachs, leaving the women in the living room with their coffee and cigarettes.

“Wow,” he whispers, gawking at the falcon on my desk in admiration.

“Dad brought it over yesterday,” I say, feeling a wave of pride because it isn’t often that Peter expresses appreciation or gets excited about anything.

“Isn’t that the falcon from the ship?” he asks enthusiastically. “Isn’t that Christian the Ninth?”

“The one and only,” I say nonchalantly.

“Your dad is just amazing,” says Peter, stroking the chest feathers with one finger.

“He sat with me here into the small hours,” I say. “We hadn’t seen each other for ages. He had to do a lot of extra shifts on the ship, you know.”

“He’s great,” says Peter, but I don’t know whether he’s talking about the falcon or Dad.

It gives me a strangely good feeling lying about Dad coming in to sit beside me last night. Maybe it’s because I know Peter believes me or has no reason not to. Or maybe it’s because I feel I have to even the score. It’s actually Peter’s dad who’s great. Every summer he takes his family abroad on vacation, and while Peter’s mom and sisters sunbathe on the beach or go shopping, he takes Peter to natural-history museums, national museums, and zoos. His dad is even a subscriber to
National Geographic.
While my dad sends me postcards from foreign places, Peter has actually been
in
those foreign places with his dad. While my dad is out at sea, Peter’s dad is at home reading Peter long articles out of the
National Geographic.
And while my dad is divorced and has a girlfriend somewhere miles away, whom he spends all of his time with when he’s ashore, Peter’s dad is tirelessly making more children with his mom to make his family even bigger and happier. Sometimes I think that although God was a bit mean to saddle Peter with five sisters that he constantly complains about, he was also merciful to him because at least he has a dad who actually lives with him and who’s a
National Geographic
subscriber to boot. What more could he ask for?

“I know what we’ll do,” says Peter. “I’ll borrow my dad’s camera, and then we’ll take the bird out and stick him in a few places and take pictures. Then we can make our own magazine,” he adds. “Our own
National Geographic.
”

“You take the pictures,” I say.

“And you write the articles,” he says.

“Maybe your dad can help us.”

“We could call it
Nature in Words and Pictures,
” says Peter as if he didn’t hear me.

“Or
Wildlife and Nature,
” I say, trying to play down the importance of my proposal.

“Or
Mother Earth,
” says Peter.

Peter is always full of ideas that he can almost always make come true. But that’s also because he gets help from his dad. Once he made a crossword magazine and went around the neighborhood selling it for the Red Cross. He thought it was a smart idea: crosswords, Red Cross. It was called
The Red Crossword Magazine.
And he sat there for a whole weekend with his dad in his office, photocopying the magazine and painting the front page red with India ink. It sold well, and he donated the proceeds to the Red Cross. Another time he got the idea of making a dovecote and breeding pigeons and training them as carriers. His dad supplied the wood and chicken wire, and we spent the whole weekend in his garden making this big shed-like birdhouse for the pigeons to live in. Then we spent days hunting pigeons with a stick, some string, and a cardboard box, but when we’d caught eight of them, the cat went into the cote and killed them all. The cote is still there in Peter’s garden. In spite of everything, it was a great idea.

We discuss the magazine and decide that the first issue should have a photograph of the falcon on the cover. I walk Peter to the door, and he says bye and thanks to Mom. When he is on the doorstep, he gives me his stiff salute and strikes his tough military pose.

“Farewell, Sergeant Stephenson.”

And I do the same — give him a salute with a perfect swing of the hand and a stern frown.

“Dismissed! Farewell, Private Johnson.”

Auntie Carol is still sitting in the living room, smoking cigarettes and sucking sugar cubes with her coffee as I come back in for just another slice of pear tart. Carol is saying she envies Mom for working at a clean chocolate factory, but Mom says Carol’s the one to envy because at least she gets to dip her hands into the healthy slime of blessed fish, which is a lot better than the chocolate gunk she has to bury her hands in and the clouds of sugar that give her migraines. Carol has a husky smoker’s voice, and it really suits her because that’s the kind of person she is: a tough, determined, thickset ball. She suddenly turns to me and peers into my face as if she were looking for ringworm in a cod fillet or something.

“Well, then, kiddo, so you’re thirteen now, are you? Have you started smooching girls yet?”

I gulp down the pear tart I’m chewing and my face sets on fire because I can’t come up with an answer, but Mom laughs gently and Carol wheezes from deep inside like the laughing bag.

“No? Well, that’s all right, boy — plenty of time for that.”

I avert my gaze and swallow the slice as fast as I can. How can she see that I haven’t started kissing girls? I might have, for all she knows. Or is the truth so blatantly obvious?

“Your genes are sure to take over sooner or later,” she adds, squinting through the smoke.

“God forbid,” Mom scoffs, and they both giggle at their idiotic joke.

I suddenly feel uncomfortable sitting here listening to them. They’re just two stupid old bags. What are they poking their noses into my business for? Why doesn’t the old camel just buzz off home?
Don’t you have to be on the assembly line at seven o’clock tomorrow morning, old bag?
my mind yells at Auntie Carol. But I don’t say it out loud. I just say thanks for the tart and take my plate into the kitchen.

“He’s really moody,” I hear Carol saying back in the living room.

“He’s reached that age.” Mom sighs. “But I’ve been so lucky with him, never have any problems with him. He’s awfully good.”